FAQ

The Open Identity Exchange (OIX) is a technology agnostic, non-profit trade organization of leaders from competing business sectors focused on building the volume and velocity of trusted transactions online. OIX enables members to expand existing identity services and serve adjacent markets. Members advance their market position through joint research and engaging in pilot projects to test real world use cases. The results of these efforts are published via OIX white papers and shared publically via OIX workshops.

OIX members work together to jointly fund and participate in pilot projects (sometimes referred to as alpha projects). These pilots test business, legal, and/or technical concepts or theory and their interoperability in real world use cases.

To effectively provide digital services, businesses and governments need to validate, verify, and authenticate identity in a cheap, reliable, repeatable manner. The rapid advancement of open identity technologies has created an interoperable technical platform to make this possible. While the technology exists for relying parties (such as an online retailer or government agency) to utilize third-party identity providers, the business and legal policies that set the rules for identity issues such digital transactions have lagged behind. Without clear agreements on the business, legal, and technical terms of a transaction, how can parties trust each other? OIX was formed to facilitate the development of the business and legal policies that match open identity technologies, thereby establishing trust among act actors—trust that will enable deeper deployments of existing services and rapid deployments of new online products.

How does OIX work to solve this problem? admin
2016-09-07T08:28:17+00:00

To create greater trust in the identity layer of online transactions, OIX addresses the hardest issues head on. OIX taps the domain expertise of its leaders and members to engage in a business, legal, and technical policy “sandbox.” There they lead joint research and pilot/alpha programs that study and test pre-market solutions to impediments such as liability, payments, trustmarks, interoperability, and privacy.

All this is something one company can do, but when done on a collect basis—with the most innovative names and brains in the industry—it is more cost effective, and hold and greater market impact. For an example, see how OIX members are collaborating to test identity verification and the elevation of authentication through the use of social media attributes in the Internet Life Verification Alpha Project.

Is OIX following an open market model approach? admin
2016-09-07T08:29:06+00:00

Yes, the key challenge to providing identity assurance at Internet scale is removing the need for direct trust agreements between identity providers and relying parties. To solve this problem, the open identity community, led by members of the OpenID Foundation and Information Card Foundation, developed the Open Identity Trust Framework (OITF) model. This model “breaks apart” centralized control of certification into separate functions in order to create an open competitive market for each function.

What are the benefits of an open market model for identity assurance? admin
2016-09-07T09:06:43+00:00

Open market models reward good market behavior in a virtuous cycle. Having trust frameworks, trust framework providers, identity providers, relying parties, and assessors competing directly with each other for business means:

More choice for users and websites about the policies that will apply to their interactions.

Market pricing for services throughout the open identity infrastructure.

Economies of scale as service standardization lowers costs for all parties.

Diversity from head to foot of the “long tail”, which is especially important to preserve the diversity of contexts and policies necessary for a healthy online ecosystem…

If you are a provider of identity services, a site that wants to consume identity credentials from certified providers, or a professional IT industry assessor/auditor, OIX is the market for you. In addition OIX welcomes governments, professional associations, non-profit networks, and other communities who want to develop their own trust frameworks.

What are the top benefits of OIX membership? admin
2016-09-07T09:09:30+00:00

OIX’s two tiered member program – Executive and General (with a special pricing plan for government, academic and non-profit organizations) – encourages organizations of all sizes to participate, collaborate, and contribute to the success of our shared mission. Each tier has auditing, participation and/or leadership benefits commensurate with financial contribution. See the complete fee schedule.

The Open Identity Exchange (OIX) is a technology agnostic, non-profit trade organization of leaders from competing business sectors focused on building the volume and velocity of trusted transactions online.